1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of psychology education and demonstration, particularly with respect to forms of behavioral intervention for teaching and providing practice in core replacement behaviors to individuals with behavioral challenges.
2. Description of Related Art
Applied behavior analysis provides a scientific means of improving socially significant behavior through the application of experimentally derived behavioral principles. To facilitate the assessment of changes in behavior over time, behaviors are defined in observable, measurable ways. Targeted behaviors of interest are then observed within the environment in which they occur in order to identify and evaluate the factors that engender or influence those behaviors. Interventions can then be designed to achieve positive behavioral changes.
The capacity of applied behavior analysis to create positive changes in behavior lies not only in the motivational strategies developed to achieve those changes, but in certain teaching and practice components that leverage those motivational strategies, and indeed, provide the necessary groundwork for such strategies to work. In particular, discrete trial training, in which a trainer guides an individual learner through multiple trials of training and reinforcement through errorless learning, contributes substantially to the successful implementation of applied behavior analysis by ensuring that the individual develops the ability to carry out the desired behaviors that such motivational strategies seek to achieve.
These teaching and practice components become particularly critical when an individual lacks, or is insufficiently accomplished in, the very skill sets necessary to adopt the positive behaviors that are the object of motivational strategies. In order for motivational strategies to succeed in changing the behaviors of individuals of normal development who have not yet achieved sufficient developmental maturity to have learned or mastered given skills, as well as those of special needs individuals with physical, mental, or emotional disabilities or developmental deficits who do not possess, or are not adept at, those necessary skills, the requisite skill sets must first be taught.
Various devices and methods have been developed for implementing motivational strategies for achieving positive behavioral changes in individuals and tracking individual progress towards this end. These devices and methods, however, have been designed principally for use with individuals who are assumed to have mastered the skill sets necessary to perform the positive behaviors that are the object of these motivational strategies. Such devices and methods, therefore, focus solely on getting individuals to use behavioral skills they already possess or on providing a structure in which those behavioral skills may be used. Indeed, the complexity of many of these devices and methods reflects an implicit assumption that the individuals who are to use and benefit from them are well within normal ranges for physical, mental, and emotional function. They are therefore of little or no value for use with behaviorally challenged individuals suffering from fundamental physical, mental, or emotional disabilities, deficits, or delays, or with individuals who enjoy normal development but are insufficiently mature to utilize or benefit from them.